Call for Crowdfunding!

Dear Folks! Zerocat’s Chipflasher applies for FSF’s
Respects-Your-Freedom Certificate.
Help us now (as of November 2017) to
start a crowdfunding campaign
with CrowdSupply and let’s get the
Chipflasher onto the FSF Website!

The Zerocat Label

Do you like proprietary hardware? We don’t. That’s why
we would like to use free-design hardware only, but in general there
is none available. Companies keep essential internals apart from the
public: mechanical construction data is not published, access to system
boards is restricted and processor internals are subject to
Non-disclosure agreements
between manufacturers.

That is what we want to change! Under the umbrella of the Zerocat Label,
we are going to publish true free-design hardware projects, that is
hardware of a free-design even down to chip level.

Free-Design Hardware is our Mission

Setting up free-design hardware is not that easy! In general, you
won’t find solutions that are clean, every system is somehow
infiltrated by proprietary business models, non-disclosure agreements
and undocumented features. When it comes to electronics, you will depend
on closed-source microchips and discretes very easily. As today’s chips are
getting at the same time smaller and more powerful, the public should
get concerned.

Precious exceptions are the Propeller microchip from Parallax
and the Freedom E310 from SiFive, which is a RISC-V controller.
The design files of both chips have been released
under a free license.

With these devices we really have the chance to setup a new class of
electronics: one that stays free, affordable and trustworthy.
Now we are capable of building up true free-design hardware electronics,
and the Zerocat Team agrees to not give up this exceptional
condition easily. We want more than just a free-design board layout,
instead we aim to avoid non-free microchips wherever possible.

Web Resources

Note that we are using a multi-repository structure for our projects, thus
the label’s documentation comes in its own git repository. It contains
general infos about the label’s structure, common tools, contributors etc.
on the one hand, shop information, key products and box accompanying
papers on the other. Projects that are promoted more prominently have
their repos mentioned on their own webpage, see above.